


Backbone

by ThisMessIsAPlace (McFearo)



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: But with this courier it is not a happy setting for Ulysses fans so fair warning, Gen, House Courier, Lourdes Espinoza, The conflict with Ulysses is always an interesting lens to examine the courier through, bit of a character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 16:38:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12136635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McFearo/pseuds/ThisMessIsAPlace
Summary: After the events of Lonesome Road, she has a chat with Ulysses.





	Backbone

“You know,” Lourdes says out of the blue, somewhere in Hopeville, “I think a lot of people think I'm a stone cold bitch.

“If the boot fits, I guess.”

Her companion is silent, because of course he is. It leaves her an opening to speak uninterrupted. She just doesn't have much to say yet, not without really thinking it through. Feels like she's only just getting that time.

Winded from the long walk, she pauses to adjust her load. Her shoulders have been burning like hell since the High Road.

Well, longer than that if she's honest, but it was bearable up until then. It's been working through a few levels of _intolerable_ ever since, but she's stopped to rest as needed. If she paces herself she can keep on all the way back to the canyon wreckage.

Unscrewing the cap off her canteen one-handed is a pain in the ass but it's the lesser evil; she has the will to match her brawn, though there are limits, and if she sets everything down now she's not sure she'll have the give-a-fuck left to pick everything back up again. So she braces the canteen against her thigh, works it open, and takes a long drink.

“Since you're not about to tell anyone,” she goes on when she's done, “between you and me I'm gonna miss that little robot. I know it's waiting for me back in Primm, but it's different, after seeing it get fried. I'll remember that.”

Canteen back in her pocket, she grunts and shrugs until her burden is as comfortable as it's going to get.

“You only ever need to be brave for a few seconds at a time, I think,” Lourdes grits out philosophically as she trudges on. With all the weight shifting atop it, the dirt and gravel want to skid under her boots when she hits an incline, but she digs her heels in. “Most shit that's worth being scared of, it's just a plunge. Sometimes you only see that from the other side -- if you live through it -- but really it is. Just takes a moment, then it's done.

“ED-E had more balls in the seconds that mattered than most of the men I've met. So, I guess I'll try to remember that part a little harder than how it went out.”

Ulysses doesn’t answer, and she's not insane enough to expect him to. But talking takes her mind off the maddeningly dull litany of _left, right, left_ for a while.

When she reaches the overlook two hours later, Lourdes finally drops the flagpole, and the shovel she picked up in Ashton.

Then, with a sigh of relief, she drops Ulysses too.

The flag wrapped around him is redder than she remembers from when she ripped it down in the Silo. Arms shaking from the strain, she peels off her jacket and winces at the weakness in her shoulders first. She grimaces at the tacky blood all over her second.

No wonder the Marked Men kept their distance. She looks like an overworked butcher.

Nothing for it.

Digging a hole has to wait a while -- wait for her to sit in the shade and rehydrate. A bottle of dirty water from the bottom of her pack cleans the blood off her hands; some salted brahmin meat and a pack of snack cakes bring back the energy. After that she stalls a little longer and puffs a cigar to unwind the tension in her limbs.

She sits a bit and blows smoke rings toward the setting sun.

When her sore shoulders at least feel sturdy again she pushes to her feet and picks up the shovel. An arm stretched limp across the rocks gives her pause, so she stoops to gently tuck him back into his shroud. Snug and neat.

Then, cigar clenched in her teeth and the pip-boy radio droning on, she gets to work.

“Didn't see the point, is all,” she tells him after a while. “Of your whole…” A pause to free one hand and flip it vaguely through the air. “Your thing, with me.

“I mean, I did. I _do._ I know I'd feel the same, if somebody came and tore my home up. They _did_ , even, so I guess I get it.”

The shovel cracking and scraping against a stone lodged in the dirt grates on her nerves. Lourdes stabs around a few times to find the edge of it and starts to work it loose. It's a big motherfucker, so it takes some doing.

“Point is, though, your aim sucked ass. Me, when some grunt piece of shit comes to wreck my good time? I save all my fury for the fucker that sent her.”

Bigger than she thought, even. The stone is several times again as large as her head, and she takes the time to dig around it. It gives her an idea, anyway.

“That's the difference between you and me, I guess,” Lourdes goes on, pausing to tap ash off of her cigar. Downwind, away from the body. “One difference, anyway. If I'm gonna bring down hell, I'm gonna rain it downhill from the very tippy top.

“I say that, at least. House wants to cut _deals_ with the men who ordered my home cut down. He'll get it, too. No muss, no fuss. Not from me.

“So I guess _that's_ the kind of cold bitch I am. The sell-out kind.” She squints through the smoke at the lump of him, wrapped in his flag that meant so much, and takes another puff before she grinds the cigar out on her heel and tosses the stub over the cliff's edge.

The rock’s loose enough to lift, and after the day she's had the strain of it takes all the talk out of her for a while. She drops it nearby, and goes back to shoveling.

When the hole is long and wide enough for him, and no deeper than the one at Goodsprings, she sits down on the rock she'd exhumed to hydrate again.

“It's not about money,” she tells him. “Between you and me. Not that I mind the money.

“It's not about fame and fortune, or an easy ride from here on out.” She chews the next bitter thought a minute longer before she spits it out. “Real truth is, it's because I can. I can, and no one else. Every time that few seconds rolls around I find out I'm the only one with balls enough to jump. If I don't it just won't get fucking done.”

Lourdes looks at Ulysses again, shrouded in blue and white and red, red, red. Only heat left is from the sun that beat down on them both while she carried him, and with night settled in that's going off, too.

He burned out long ago, as far as she gathered. He'd just smoldered on with misplaced hate. But that's gone off, too.

“I'm gonna build a nation that works, because I can. That's all. If you want to know what I believe in, it's me.”

Lourdes nods affirmation to herself. She doesn't doubt. She never did. “Let House do the numbers and draft the deals. Mine's the backbone this fucking nation will be built on, and you and I both know it'll be strong as shit.

“Shame you couldn't see it happen.”

She unwraps him again, careful not to really look at him as she pulls off his duster and sets it aside. Whoever he was, what's left isn't him. Not worth getting sappy about. Barely worth the work she's putting in, but that's debt for you.

Lourdes will be the only one who ever has to know she was here just now, paying off what she could to a man who's gone. The only witness is the shell he left when she sent him on. She'll be the only one to know why, and that suits her.

“I don't know how your people did this,” she confides as she tucks his limbs in and wraps him up again. “We'll just have to make do, won't we?”

More tender than how she put him down at the Temple, Lourdes lays Ulysses in his grave, the same way she'd lain children in their bedrolls at Bitter Springs. Then she pours the dirt in.

The rocks come last, one last wear on her sore limbs before they've earned their sleep. She starts with the one she'd dug out, and all things considered, she doesn't need to walk far to find the next, and the next.

When the cairn is done it's a fine place to wedge his staff in, his duster hanging from it like a flag.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on [Tumblr!](http://atomicreactor.tumblr.com)


End file.
